Saturday, January 10, 2009

About This Tea: This tea was a sample from Alex over at Another Tea Blog. This tea was labeled as Awacha, from Shikoku. Neither of us really knew what type of tea this entailed or much more details about it.

Leaf: The leaf for this tea had browner older woodier stems in it than most Japanese green teas. The leaf was rather flat, but not as much as say a dragonwell tea. The color had two main components to it, a lighter green color and a nice dark green leaf color. There was not much of an aroma from this tea and it seemed rather dry.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 50z, 1 min, 185F

1st Infusion: The infusion had a very yellow color to it. The tea gave off a very bancha like sharp aroma. The flavor matched the bancha flavor with a hint of mellowness to it. There was a ligth bitterness on the backend of the flavor and no astringency.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 185F, 30s

2nd Infusion: This infusion was again yellow in color, but it was a much stronger, bolder, darker shade of yellow than the first infusion. The flavor was much heavier and richer. The strength of the tea hinted toward a strong almost metallic taste.

Rating: 4/10

Conclusion: We didn't know much about this tea aside from it's name. Based on it's flavor profile it feels like a slight variation on a bancha. Most of the charactersistics are shared with bancha, but the stems were a bit unusual for one. Granted this is not enough to exclude it from possibly being one. Without pricing it would be hard to say how good of a value this tea would be, or even where to go to get some. With that said though, the flavor of this tea was somewhat mundane and I wouldn't go out of my way to go hunt some of this down.